


Summer Stupidity: GOTHAM (City Review!)

by VigilantSycamore



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Overly Sarcastic Productions
Genre: City Reviews, Gen, Listen if OSP existed in the DCU this would happen, The Batfam are cryptids, Weird Gotham City, you cannot convince me otherwise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:54:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VigilantSycamore/pseuds/VigilantSycamore
Summary: Red from Overly Sarcastic Productions reviews Gotham City.(Yes, I know I'm posting this in early March so its not summer. I do not control the idea factory)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 289





	Summer Stupidity: GOTHAM (City Review!)

[*Disclaimer*

This is not a comprehensive rundown of every pro and con to the city of Gotham and is instead based on my personal experience visiting the city for completely unrelated reasons to making this video. It is highly subjective and personal, and the main purpose is to be funny, not comprehensively informative.

Have fun :)]

Gotham, New Jersey is the thirteenth-most populated city in the United States, the ninth-most densely populated, and is primarily known for driving everyone who lives there completely freaking insane. It’s older than Boston and also more Bostony than Boston in every way imaginable.

**Transit**

Gotham is a city where nobody drives and everyone who does is a menace to society. There’s no point in traffic lights because nobody cares what they have to say, all the drivers just floor it and all the pedestrians just jaywalk and somehow nobody dies. At one point, I was heading back to my hotel in the evening when I heard some sort of eldritch screech and saw a clown car being chased by something that neither looked nor sounded like a car has any right to.

Gotham is so allergic to grids, Boston looks like New York by comparison. I tried to get from the Old Village to West Denver, which according to Google Maps should be a ten-minute trip, but an hour and a half later I had somehow ended up in Innsmouth, which is on the completely opposite side of the city. I do not remember getting there.

If you’re not _from_ Gotham, sooner or later you will be tempted to give up and just get a cab. I will now tell you what my Gothamite friend told me: DON’T GET A CAB. If you’re going to risk public transport, the monorail is the way to go because the sanctity of the monorail is something nobody in Gotham is willing to violate.

7/10: I’m pretty sure Gotham’s transit is a trap designed by the Fair Folk and I’m afraid of what will happen to me if I rate it any lower.

**Sights To See**

A lot of Pioneer Island burned down in 1842 so it was rebuilt by Cyrus Pinkney, an architect whose style consists of making everything look like a Gothic cathedral with more gargoyles. This includes the _actual_ Gotham Cathedral, which has _thirty-five_ gargoyles on it, all of which have their own names and, if the souvenirs are to be believed, their own personalities. Then the rest of Gotham imitated that style, which means that everything has gargoyles on it, including the coffee shops.

On top of that, there’s the stuff that was designed by the Gates Brothers, like the absolutely _insane_ Gotham Bridges, or Wayne Tower, which was the tallest building in the United States _and_ the world until it was one-upped by the Empire State Building. Fun fact: there’s a poster you can buy that has an outline of the Empire State Building and the word “compensating” written on it, and that poster is proudly displayed in the Wayne Tower lobby.

Being in the Old Village is like stepping back and forth through a time warp: one second you’re in the 21st Century, the next you’re in the 1600s. They have a statue of Mortdecai – yes, the one from that Basil Carlo movie – and no matter what angle you look at it from, it feels like he’s judging _you_ specifically.

Sheldon Park is _not_ a park, it is a forest, I don’t care what anyone tells me, and I’m pretty sure I saw Pleistocene megafauna in there, and I don’t just mean the herd of moose. Yes, herd, there’s more than one.

And there’s no point talking about Gotham if you don’t mention the cryptids. I didn’t actually meet any of them, but I’m pretty sure I saw Batman pose dramatically on a rooftop then vanish, and the gift shops have these cute little keychains with chibi versions of all the bat-cryptids.

11/10: I wish more cities were this committed to the aesthetic.

**Weather**

Gotham has two types of weather: cloudy and rainy. When it’s cloudy, day is indistinguishable from night and you’re constantly worried it’s going to start raining. When it does rain, you find out that it’s a good thing the entire city is built on top of a cave network that functions as a giant, naturally occurring, storm drain, otherwise it would be underwater by now. Also, there’s lightning and thunder all the time which is why all the pre-Batman postcards have lightning bolts on them.

10/10: The weather may be a nightmare, but it’s also an aesthetic and I appreciate that.

**Food**

If you like fast food, you’re in the right place, because Gotham is the fast food capital of America. Big Belly Burger used to have its headquarters here, and now there’s also Bat-Burger, which you _know_ is great because they’ve somehow stayed in business despite naming most of their meals after supervillains. I’ve been to Bat-Burger, and their food _is_ great.

If you don’t like fast food, then the modern-looking parts of the Old Village have a few diners that look like they belong in Stars Hollow, and the rest of Uptown Gotham has coffee shops everywhere.

9/10: I like fast food, diners, _and_ coffee shops, I see no problem here.

**People**

Gothamites do _not_ give a damn. I’ve seen these people climb over a car that had stopped on top of the crosswalk during a traffic jam. I would have done the same, but I still had self-preservation instincts.

At one point I was waiting in line at the coffee shop when the guy in front of me asked me riddles from The Hobbit. I got them all right then did the “what have I got in my pocket?” thing, he laughed and gave me a business card and told me to call him if I need a job. I’m pretty sure that was Edward Nygma, but it was also the most successful job interview I’ve ever had.

Gotham University somehow manages to be one of the best universities in the country, so the city is half college students and a quarter of the population are zillenials. Gothamites also have their own meme culture, which left me feeling even more confused than before.

8/10: Gothamites love memes and don’t fear death, which is neat, but they also scare and confuse me.

**Final Thoughts**

Overall, I give Gotham a final score of “Pretty cool, if bizarre and distressing”. It’s a great place to be if you like labyrinths, cryptids, and gothic architecture, and don’t mind the eldritch abomination that’s responsible for all this weirdness.


End file.
